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Stellar Smart Home: How to Set Up Automation in Your House

Home automation covers a broad range of appliances, amenities, and other conveniences. Given the large scale of household chores and activities that can be carried out automatically, automating your home can superficially appear both daunting and expensive. However, once you understand the broad strokes of creating a smart home, from setting up a central hub to figuring out which tasks you’d like to connect to the system, it’s both reasonably affordable and easy to set up and maintain a home automation system from a company like AMP Smart.

smart-home

The Basics

The first step in setting up automation in your home is determining which tasks you’d like your system to manage. Creating a smart home leaves plenty of room for customization and no two smart homes will be exactly alike. Generally speaking, you can look at automation as dividing into two distinct categories: devices and amenities. The device category includes audio and visual entertainment systems, computers, and appliances like washers and dryers. Amenities includes lighting, sprinklers, heating and air conditioning, security systems with cameras and door alarms, and other larger-scale systems in and around your home.

While these devices can be automated on a one-to-one basis, the best approach is to create a central control hub for the ultimate smart home experience. This central hub can be a physical unit or control panel, but it can also be achieved through apps that work with your existing tablet or smartphone, though this may depend on the scale of the system, and some mixing and matching is possible. A tablet offers more on-the-go control, but a dedicated console is inherently more secure because it is stationary.

Home automation uses a broad range of protocols, including Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, and more specialized platforms like Z-Wave, Thread, Zigbee, and X-10. While the choice is ultimately up to you, a mixed approach built around wi-fi and Z-wave is commonly suggested, as you’re likely experienced with wi-fi and Z-wave has widespread support on a range of devices and systems.

Where to Start

If this is your first time automating aspects of your household, you’ll likely want to do a mix of devices and amenities. Stick with the amenities you already have before adding additional systems like security or smart lawn irrigation. Your HVAC amenities, which includes your heating, ventilation, and air conditioning are a perfect starting point. Smart thermostats are surprisingly affordable and simple to install. As a bonus, homeowners with a smart thermostat save around 10 percent annually on energy bills, meaning you’ll quickly recoup the cost of the unit.

Smart light switches and outlets are another house-wide amenity that can easily be adapted. Light timers have been popular for decades as both a convenience and handy security feature and can now be integrated into a larger smart home system. By integrating these with smart switches and outlets, you can not only automate your indoor and outdoor lighting, but also remotely control power to a whole range of devices, be it computers and printers, kitchen appliances, or your washer and dryer units.

Automating your devices can be more involved than just remotely controlling their power supply. There’s a broad range of wireless devices that can be linked up to a central hub for ease of control. One of the more interesting features these offer is the use of smart sensors. By detecting your comings and goings, smart sensors can automatically turn lights and devices on and off depending on whether or not you’re home or in a specific room. They aren’t essential, but are definitely a huge convenience and set your system apart from other smart homes. As said, there are a broad range of devices with smart and automated capabilities, including integrated home audio systems, surveillance cameras, and even coffee pots.

The Sky’s the Limit

The level of automation achievable in your home is really only limited by your imagination. Now that a few generations of products have been released, the cost has settled to a point where it’s possible to have smart home features on any budget. Familiarize yourself with the various protocols used for smart technology and try to aim for consistency, as this will ease the process of placing all your devices and amenities under a central control hub. Focus on automating things you use every day, like lighting or heating, and from there branch out into more exotic implementations.

Guest Post By:

Dixie Somers / Freelance Writer
dixiesomers@gmail.com

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Awesome Home Tech and Apps All Busy Moms Need

awesome-home-tech-and-apps-all-busy-moms-need

The variety of technology available in our homes and lives today is greater than ever, but busy moms don’t have the time to test out every new thing. Who has time for that on top of everything else you do?  We’ve collected seven of the best apps here to optimize your extremely valuable time and make life at home and on the go a lot easier to manage.

Our Home

An awesome app that allows parents and kids to keep track of responsibilities, chores, and rewards! Our home can track each family member’s history and progress, contribute to a shared grocery list, and never forget a soccer practice or recital with the shared calendar. Available on Android and iOS.

Ring

Cool alternative to traditional security systems! Ring offers video doorbells, motion alert scanners, and more to help you keep an eye on your home even when you’re far away. Link and manage all your Ring devices on your smartphone, apps available in iTunes, and on Google Play. Some outdoor alarm systems are even compatible on different security apps like this one, making it easy to see who’s coming and going from home, even when you aren’t there.

Route4Me

How many times have you looped around the same block during your errands? Too many. This app for Android and Apple lets you plug in all your destinations and the perfect route will be laid out for you. The app instantly rearranges your stops based on changes like forced detours.

AirBNB

Having to finagle a family of four or more into a hotel room can be a real hassle. The cost of reserving additional rooms and leaving kids on their own just packs on additional stress. Enter AirBNB, an app that allows you to book entire apartments or houses for your next travel adventure. Live like a local wherever you are, apps available for web, iOS, and Android.

DuoLingo

Practicing multiple languages is proven to be beneficial for people of all ages. Whether you’re planning for an international trip or practicing a love of linguistics, DuoLingo is a free app on all platforms with humorous tutorials and is safe for all family members.

Lumosity

Brain games for adults and kids alike, Lumosity games let you challenge each other, exercise your mind, and keep the entire family learning in an entertaining format. Available on Apple and Android devices.

Swagbucks Mobile

Swagbucks is an incredibly popular web tool, but did you know they have a mobile app? In-store coupons, exclusive member deals, and surveys on the go help you earn points which you can cash in for gift cards. iOS and Android versions available.

There you have it, the best of the best tech and apps for busy moms. Now, enjoy some well-deserved downtime! You have wrangled several home management tasks with the power of technology.

Guest Post By:

eileen-oshanassy-1Eileen O’Shanassy is a freelance writer and blogger based out of Flagstaff, AZ. She writes on a variety of topics and loves to research and write. She enjoys baking, biking, and kayaking. Check out her Twitter @eileenoshanassy.

 

A Few New Tools All Real Estate Investors Should Know About

real estate investor tools

Successful real estate investors know it’s a numbers game. Being able to analyze statistics, evaluating them and then reacting to your analysis can separate the good real estate investor from the not so good.

Emotions play a part when one selects a home to live in. But when buying or selling property strictly as an investment function, leave the emotions at the door. As Sergeant Friday used to say on the old Dragnet television show, “just the facts, ma’am,” facts are what you need to base your investment decision on.

There are a number of new technology tools available to help investors separate facts from blue-sky fiction and over enthusiastic promoters.

Here is a list of some of the best:

1.Mortgage Calculator & Mortgage Rate Apps

Zillow has one of the best mortgage calculators apps around. Whether you’re looking to calculate payments on a possible property purchase or prepare a financial deal or refinance an existing mortgage, this app is both fast and easy to use.

A quick glance at the Zillow app on your iPhone or tablet when you are evaluating real estate projects to determine if the deal fits into your plans saves not only time but the danger of making snap decisions without knowing the numbers.

2.Real Estate by Trulia

This app is a very effective and user-friendly adaptation of the original Trulia Website. Always known for its investor-friendly tools, Trulia’s Real Estate app helps you find listings on properties and surrounding comparables in any area of the country. Coupled with an incredible interactive mapping feature, this is one app every serious real investor should have in their arsenal of tools.

Another similar site is the flat fee MLS listing site, Fizber. One of the biggest killers of margins is closing costs and realtor costs. Fizber allows you to get your property listed on the MLS for a small fee, giving you access to nearly 80% of US homebuyers.

3.Skype

If you’re not using Skype in your real estate investing business, you’d be wise to get on board and add it to your tool box.

Skype was a pioneer in free internet voice and video chat. They continue to dominate the market as one of the cheapest phone service providers around. Their face-to-face conference call function brings clients and buyers and sellers together from anywhere in the world. Once thought of as only science fiction, Skype has given us the incredible ability to converse in live pictures from a mobile device at any time of the day and anywhere around the globe.

4.Genius Scan

Going paperless, a goal of most innovative real estate investors, is made easier with the Genius Scan app. You no longer need a computer of a fax machine to forward documents to clients or banks. The Genius Scan turns any image into a pdf document in only seconds that has the finished look of a high-quality regular scanned document. And being that this quality app is FREE, it’s a tool you need to look at right away.

5.PlanEASe Software

This software program helps you analyze commercial property for financial and cash flow projections. It offers the investor a comprehensive management tool to deal with multi-unit residential and office properties. The base unit has extensions that include graphics, reporting, with the ability to combine files for portfolio analysis.

6.REO Wise Software

With his program, you can take commercial real estate analysis into the cloud. With a paid cloud subscription, it’s PowerBroker suite includes investment, leasing, financial modeling and marketing tools. It also features a transaction platform for real estate investors with a virtual deal room and document center.

7.Property Fixer App

If you’re an investor who flips properties for a fast gain, the Property Fixer is the tool for you. Using your smartphone, you can analyze property in five minutes and study the figures for holding it from 0 to 12 months in order to determine maximum profitability. Using the Property Fixer app, you can then email the resulting figures directly your clients under you company brand name with your logo.

8.Easy Kilowatt Hour Calculator

Commercial property investors can use this app as a watt hour meter to help determine the energy usage and cost of a possible acquisition.

To keep up in the competitive real estate investing game, where facts and current information are critical, it’s important to keep up with what’s new in the field of technology tools. Subscribing to a couple of commercial real estate newsletters and keeping current with real estate web sites that promote technological advances could be the key to keeping you successful.

 

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